Iolanda brought more than one song to Malmö, Sweden, in a final marked by incidents and the escalation of the controversy surrounding Israeli participation.
“Peace will prevail,” shouted Iolanda at the end of the “Grito” she brought to the Eurovision stage on Saturday night, which earned her tenth place on the leaderboard. As well as being highly praised, the Portuguese performance, which received 12 points from the United Kingdom, Croatia and France, finishing seventh in the jury votes, was a performance literally painted with a message.
The 29-year-old singer-songwriter wore gel nails with patterns alluding to Palestine and the Palestinian resistance, prompting numerous reports on the Internet that the Eurovision organization was undermining the Portuguese performance by not publishing the video of the performance, as was being done with the other contestants. Until Iolanda’s performance, who was the 18th to take the stage at the festival and who ended the moment with a call for peace, videos of the performances were being published on the Eurovision platforms immediately as they happened. But in the case of Portugal, the video was only released after more than an hour, after the videos of other performances had been uploaded after the Portuguese one, and under strong protest from fans at the delay in sharing the Portuguese song.
According to RTP, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the festival’s organizer, chose to publish the video of Iolanda’s semi-final (in which she only had white fingernails) on the contest’s official website. The Portuguese station questioned the organization about the omission and the video was published more than an hour later.
In the video published on Eurovision YouTube, there are several comments from national and foreign fans pointing out and condemning the delay in publishing the video, accusing the organization of the event of having boycotted the Portuguese performer and hindered a possible better result.
While the Portuguese candidate stood out for her defense of the Palestinian cause, Portuguese viewers voted heavily for Israel, with the Portuguese televote giving 12 points to Israeli Eden Golan’s song, “Hurricane”, which ended up in fifth place.
Swiss Eurovision win marked by controversy over Israeli participation
Contrary to predictions that Croatia would win, Swiss artist Nemo’s song “The Code” won Eurovision, in a 68th edition marked by the conflict in Gaza and the controversy surrounding Israeli participation, which escalated into an unprecedented series of incidents in the hours leading up to the event.
Despite the efforts of the authorities and the organization to ensure that the show ran smoothly, they were unable to prevent this festival from being the most tense and “chaotic ever”, as several Eurovision experts described it, even before the final. Before the event began, incidents were already piling up, from demonstrations and heckling at rehearsals for the Israeli song to the disqualification of Dutchman Joost Klein for allegedly “intimidating” a member of the production team. And while in Finland demonstrators stormed the headquarters of broadcaster YLE, demanding that the contest be withdrawn, in Malmö thousands of people again protested to demand a boycott of Israel and a ceasefire in Gaza, leading to arrests, including that of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
Bambie Thug, representing Ireland, didn’t take part in the final rehearsal due to “a situation” backstage, Greece and Switzerland didn’t rehearse the flag parade and French singer Slimane interrupted the rehearsal of his performance to appeal for peace. The spokesperson for the Norwegian jury, Alessandra Mele, withdrew at the last minute, citing the “genocide” in Gaza and, according to RTP, the Portuguese delegation was one of those responsible for an emergency meeting of the organization that took place before the event. The Portuguese group reportedly requested the meeting, along with others, after witnessing harassment and bullying from members of the Israeli delegation backstage.
